Five minutes later, they opened the door.
“Speak,” said Armand. “What did you see?”
“Things hanging,” was my flustered response.
Zeno was behind me. He dealt me a slap to the neck. I turned defiantly and exclaimed: “You hit me!”
“The objective is not the blow itself but to wake you up,” Zeno said by way of justification.
“Cadet Zuviría!” called out Armand. “You are blind. Any engineer who does not know how to use his eyes properly is no engineer. If you had been paying attention, you would have given a worthier answer than this vague ‘things hanging.’ Useless. What things? How many? In what order, height, and depth?”
They made me enter once more — more accurately, they flung me back in. I committed what I could upon my retinas and to memory. When I came out, I had to describe the objects in detail and according to position. I began with the things that had been at the front and detailed the following ones using these as reference. They listened attentively and did not interrupt at any point.
“Pathetic,” was Armand’s view. “There were twenty-two objects, and you have described only fifteen, and those poorly. There was a horseshoe, yes. But how many holes did it have? Which side was it hanging on? How high up?”
I opened my mouth, but no words came out.
“Do you not understand?” said Zeno, cutting me off. “When you are attacking a bastion or defending one, and you have only a few seconds to form a picture of the situation, how are you going to take responsibility for the lives of those under you?”
“Paying attention is essential,” said Armand. “Always, at all hours and in all places. Otherwise you’ll fail to see things, and if that happens, you’ll be no use in this role. From now on, you’ll remain constantly attentive, both awake and asleep. Clear?”
“I think so.”
“Sure?”
“Yes.”
“Sure you’ve understood?”
“Yes,” I cried, more out of frustration than belief.
Before I’d finished saying “yes,” Zeno instantly said: “Describe the buckles on my shoes.”
Instinctively, I looked down.
Zeno lifted my chin with a finger. “Answer.”
I could not.
“Since you have been with us, I have been wearing the same footwear. And in all that time, you have failed to notice they have no buckles.”
In Bazoches, I realized how blind people are. Most men, when they look around, do so in a hurry, alighting briefly on single objects, guided by the base instincts — this I like, this I do not — like children. The Ducroix brothers divided the human race into two: moles and Maganons. Ninety-nine out of a hundred were blind as moles. A good Maganon would notice more things in one day than a mole would in a year. (You yourself, you blubbery mole, how many fingers do I have? Do you see? All this time together, and you have failed to notice that the tip of one of my pinkie fingers is missing. Shrapnel, Gibraltar. I say, it served welclass="underline" The siege scuppered them, and I enjoyed making life difficult for a Bourbon.)
That day they put up twenty-two objects; others, thirty, forty, even fifty. Sometimes just one, which was mere mockery, for I then had to recount its every detail. My personal best was describing one hundred and ninety-eight objects hanging from a panoply of white threads. And I had to remember everything about each and every object: the number of holes in the flute, pearls on the necklace, and teeth on the saw. Have you, gentle reader, ever tried such a thing? Do so, do, and you’ll discover in small details the vast complexity of our world.
These would all have been no more than quaint and stimulating drills, part and parcel with the brothers’ eccentricity, had it not been for the discipline known as “Fieldwork.” I imagined this was going to be some form of bracing exercise in the open air. Wasn’t it just!
We went to a field a mile or so away from the castle, a rectangular field that looked as though it hadn’t been tilled in many years. The Ducroix brothers began to hold forth on the lovely views. This was very much the way they went about things; their academic activities never drew them away from their principal motivation in life: to take pleasure in the sight of a bird in flight or a beautiful sunset.
“Well, Cadet Zuviría,” said Armand, finally turning to face me. “Let us suppose — and a wild supposition it remains — that you have become a member of the engineering corps. And let us then suppose that a ditch needs making. What would you do?”
“I suppose order the sappers to begin digging,” I answered, caught somewhat off balance.
“Very good!” said Zeno, applauding sarcastically.
Four servants from the castle approached. They were carrying stakes, ropes, and small bags containing lime, and these they deposited at our feet. Also some voluminous round wicker baskets, which, I would later learn, were known as fajinas. As well as these, an iron helmet that looked two hundred years old, a leather cuirass of a sort, and a rifle. They also left a pile of sticks, clubs, and a thousand digging implements. There are more kinds of shovels in the world than butterflies, was one of the things I learned that day.
“What are you waiting for?” said Armand.
“What’s the rifle for?” I asked, a little worried.
“Oh, don’t you worry about the rifle,” said Zeno, picking it up, walking a little way away, and loading it.
The first lessons I’d received had been on the metrics of fortifications. I took a stake and inserted it deep into the earth. I then took a rope, tied one end to the base of the stake, unspooled it to a length of sixty or seventy feet, tying the other end to another stake. I then sprinkled lime over the rope; the powder that fell either side marked a straight line for the excavation. Then I heard the report: A bullet had just flown by, whizzing past my helmet like a bumblebee.
I let out a shrill cry. “Eeeh!” I could not believe it; Zeno had shot at me! He stood a hundred feet away, reloading the rifle.
“The other way around,” said Armand. “First you smear the lime onto the rope. Then unroll it. If the rope is covered in a good amount of lime, laying it out will leave a clear line. That way you save having to move around the field a second time, and give your enemy less time to shoot at you.
“Zeno can reload and fire every two minutes,” he continued. “Lucky for you. A young rifleman, if he’s at all handy, will be able to do it in less than half that time. If I were you, I’d hurry up and start digging.”
I grabbed a pick by the handle — it weighed more than a dead man — and attacked the strip of lime for all I was worth.
“If you please!” said Armand. “Adjust your chin strap and the cuirass.”
“But why was your brother shooting at me?” I cried.
“Because it was his turn. Now it’s mine.” And he went to take the loaded rifle from Zeno.
The helmet they had given me was more like something from the fifteenth century than our own, with a visor and long earflaps, also made of iron, all extremely heavy. I was still struggling to adjust the cuirass when I heard another report. I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Promise you’ll only shoot with caps!”
They both laughed.
“Truce!” I said, raising my hands in the air. “I stop digging, you stop firing, and you can give me some coaching in that Mystère you keep mentioning.”
“And what do you think le Mystère is?” asked Armand.
They fired at me again. I hastened my digging. If I could make a sufficiently deep hole, at least I would have some protection from the bullets. Once the earth was fairly well broken up, I grabbed the shovel.